


Shimmer

by Reioka



Series: AUgust 2020 [1]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU-gust 2020, AUgust - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Arranged Marriage, Bounty Hunters, IN SPACE!, Kidnapping, Multi, Rescue Missions, possible ooc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:42:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25663819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reioka/pseuds/Reioka
Summary: AUgust Day 1: Fantasy AUGamora and Peter arrive to rescue Tony from his kidnappers. It goes surprisingly well.
Relationships: Gamora/Peter Quill/Tony Stark
Series: AUgust 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1860847
Comments: 8
Kudos: 151





	Shimmer

**Author's Note:**

> Did someone say Space Opera With Magic???? Well it’s what you’re getting! Also I’ve never written Gamora or Peter so!!!! Sorry if they’re out of character lmao.

Shimmer

“I should have gone with the others,” Gamora muttered to herself as she led the way to the tower.

Now, that wasn’t to say that she enjoyed spending time with an ogre, a fae, an enchanted tree, and a cursed raccoon in one small ship in the middle of space, but at least her sister would be there to make eye-contact with her and make a ‘I can’t believe this shit’ expression with her. As it was, they’d had to split up, because there were two jobs with big rewards, and they didn’t want to lose out on either of them.

“—nd I-I-I-I! I’m hooked on a feeling!” Peter warbled as he strummed on his lute.

“We need to get you a different music tab,” Gamora said.

“You’re just mad I won’t let you play with my lute,” Peter argued.

Gamora glanced at the lute. Mostly she just wanted to grab it and smash it to pieces, so she didn’t deign that with a response. She lifted her arm and tapped on her wrist-paDd. The hologram shimmered up, and a sullen face glared up at her, the son of an ambassador who had been kidnapped and was being held for ransom. “Don’t forget we’re actually here on a job. Nebula and I had to fight tooth and nail to be assigned these at the Board.” She waited for him to acknowledge her, then lifted her head. “Peter?” She turned. “Peter?”

He wasn’t there. They had infiltrated this planet’s security (which had been quite a feat in and of itself), had landed in an area where their ship wouldn’t be found, had dodged some sentries wandering about the edge of the forest, and gotten close to the tower the man they were searching for was being held. And now Peter was gone.

If he cost her the five hundred million credits they’d earn for the successful completion of this job, she was jettisoning him off the ship.

Gamora took a deep breath. Peter Quill was reckless, and he didn’t take things as seriously as he should, but things always seemed to work out for him. ‘Cursed with good luck as a babe,’ he’d always joked. So he would probably be fine. Still, she kept an ear out for a lute playing as she approached the tower.

The guards were easy enough to take care of with a few punches. She wondered at their black and yellow uniforms for a moment, then shrugged it off. They wouldn’t be the first people she’d met who worshipped the fuzzy insects so common on Terran-occupied planets. Instead she continued up the stairs of the tower, hissing in irritation whenever she tripped alarms or just flat out swearing when a magical trap went off and she had to dodge—what was this, a giant boulder?! She swore if she ever met the person responsible for the construction of the tower, she’d pitch them off a cliff.

“Open the door,” she told the final pair of guards she found, who guarded a single large, wooden door with a heavy iron padlock.

“No,” one of the guards exclaimed, offended.

Gamora punched the one who spoke right in the mask, and they crumpled to the ground. Then she turned to the other guard, glaring at them. “Open the door.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have the key,” the guard began.

Gamora pulled out her swords, and they lit up with plasma energy with a pleasant hum.

“Oh, you mean this key,” the guard said nervously, pulling a frankly comical brass key from their pocket, and handed it over to her without a fight. “If you don’t mind.”

“What?” Gamora asked them. When they motioned at their partner laid out on the ground, she nodded. “Oh. Yes.” It would probably come back on them poorly if they were found conscious and unharmed while all if their colleagues had been knocked out. She punched them in the mask too, then turned her attention back to the door.

It didn’t look like it had any other magical or technological traps on it. She almost didn’t trust it, until she remembered the sentries in the forest. Whoever these people were, their budget had obviously gone to those sentries. Very foolish of them. So, sensing no inherent danger, she carefully unlocked the padlock, then pushed the door open.

“—ing that you’re focusing so much on bubbly stuff, when you could be focusing on Ancient Hard Rock and play some absolute bangers,” a man was saying.

“Lutes were made for bubbly,” Peter replied.

Gamora stared at him in disbelief. “Peter, what the hell?”

“Gamora!” Peter exclaimed happily. He turned back to the man, smiling. “Tony, this is my girlfriend, Gamora. I told you she’d be here.”

“Oh!” the man, Tony, exclaimed in surprise. He stood more on instinct than anything else, clasping his hands in front of him before holding them out to her, palms up, wrists pointed toward her. Gamora immediately felt her blood run cold in response.

This wasn’t just the greeting of an ambassador’s son. This was the greeting of Coruscentian royalty—and not just a regular greeting, but an intimate one, typically saved for close relationships. She and Peter should not have been receiving this greeting.

“Have I done something wrong?” Tony asked, voice small, curling his fists toward his chest.

This wasn’t a kidnapping and ransom. _Tony had been sequestered so that he could be kept until a proper suitor could be brought to him for marriage._

“Why does your dad think you’ve been kidnapped,” Gamora asked, voice clipped. “Why were we paid to come find you.”

Peter seemed to realize the gravity of the situation and stood, frowning. “Gamora?”

Tony frowned uncertainly. “I—well, Dad wasn’t… _happy_ about my grandparents wanting to find a spouse for me, but… Mom has mentioned I’m getting a little old to still be single…”

“Wait, how old are you?” Peter asked, bewildered.

Tony’s eyes darted between the two of them, concerned. “…Thirty-two?”

“You are a Coruscentian _infant_ ,” Gamora exclaimed angrily, because Coruscentians typically didn’t get married until they were at least fifty, and many of their people still considered that too young.

“I—hey, I’m still half Terran—” Tony began defensively.

“Thirty-two isn’t _that_ young,” Peter began to add.

Gamora held her hand up sharply, and they both quieted. “There are only two ways to take this,” she said, trying not to sound too irritated. “Either your grandparents were going to marry you off to someone much older than you—because no Coruscentian in their right mind would marry before the age of fifty—or your grandparents were going to hold you here until you were of age. You were either going to be a child married off to an adult, or you were going to be kept in this tower for eighteen years. That’s the thought-process here.”

Tony, finally, blessedly, looked horrified. “They said they would be sending a suitor and I… I thought you or Peter—”

“Tony, who are your grandparents?” Peter asked, finally realizing that something was wrong. “Who brought you here?”

“King and Queen Starkscri,” Tony answered, voice shaking with nerves.

“Get to the ship,” Gamora told Peter immediately.

Peter was already moving for the door. “Yes, ma’am.”

Tony watched him go, very clearly worried, before he looked back at Gamora. “Are you leaving me here?”

“No,” she answered, approaching him. She plucked at the chain holding up a blue pendant around his neck. “Are you attached to this?”

He frowned as he looked down at it. “My grandparents gave it to me, but—”

“Well we already know they’re assholes, so,” Gamora said, yanking it from his neck and chucking it onto the bed. “The stone gives off a certain frequency that makes it trackable. We want them to think you’re still here.”

“They’ll figure it out,” Tony insisted, even as she took his hand to pull off a matching bracelet. “The guards always bring me supper at the same time. Gamora? Did my dad really send you to rescue me?”

Something about the way he asked made her pause. She leaned back to frown at him. “Why would you think he wouldn’t?”

“Mom wanted me to have a Terran upbringing,” Tony began haltingly. “And usually he follows her lead. And she said… I should start dating… so why…?”

“You’re not even fully sexually mature to Coruscentians, Tony,” Gamora told him.

Tony looked offended for a moment, then concerned, looking down at himself. “I’m not? How can you tell?”

“Even beings with only an eighth of Coruscentian blood sparkle when they’re completely sexually mature,” Gamora said. “It’s why they like shiny things. You don’t sparkle at all.”

Tony frowned. “You’re shitting me. Dad never told me that!”

Gamora raised an eyebrow at him. “Why would he if he thought he had plenty of time to tell you about it?” She saw something move in the window and turned, nodding sharply when she saw the ship hovering outside. “Hold on to me.”

“Why, what are yoooooaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH,” Tony screamed as she wrapped an arm around his waist and then started running, leaping out the open window.

Peter twisted the ship and had the ramp extended for them, and she managed to land on light feet. “Hey, uh, you guys better buckle up quickly because I might have accidentally not hidden fast enough from a sentry.”

“Oh, I can stop them,” Tony said as Gamora set him on his feet. “It’s my magic making them move. My grandparents said it would make me look… more desirable…” he trailed off, and his face began to crumple. “Those were really the only two options? They weren’t just going to set me up with some suitable people my age so we could court?”

Gamora considered her answer carefully. Finally, she asked, “Were you told to greet your suitor with your wrists, or was that a misunderstanding? Because when Coruscentian royalty offers someone their wrists like that, it’s to accept an offer of marriage. They would have given you a bracelet for your naked wrist to go with the one they already had. They call it ‘shackling,’ from when your planet’s peoples were warring tribes and a spouse was a spoil of war.”

Tony looked even more devastated with the information, voice soft as he answered, “They told me to.”

“Wow, and I thought my dad was a dick,” Peter grumbled. “Your grandparents can go sit on a cactus.”

“Your father really never taught you any of this?” Gamora asked, frowning at him.

Tony shrugged, clasping his hands together as he leaned his elbows on his knees. “Dad never got along with my grandparents. I thought it was because he wanted to marry a Terran and they didn’t like it because he was royalty and she was just a human senator at the federation. I never thought it was because he hated his culture. He did mention how he hated living there and preferred being an ambassador. It makes sense that he wanted me raised as a Terran if… if that’s what I would have been subjected to in his culture.” He looked up, frowning in confusion. “Wait, you said he hired you? Why?”

Gamora stared at him, shocked quiet. Eventually, she managed, “What?”

“Dad said I could visit my grandparents,” Tony explained. “I wasn’t technically kidnapped. He allowed me to go.”

“Yeah, but I doubt he expected his own parents to kidnap his son and either keep him locked up for eighteen years or sell him off to someone probably twice his age,” Peter called back from the pilot’s seat. “I wasn’t on the call to accept the job, but I could hear him yelling on the paDd in the other room.”

Tony looked surprisingly pleased by this information. Gamora got the feeling that he was going to have a lot to say to his father when they returned him.

“Can we swing by Nautingim on the way home?” Tony asked suddenly. “I promised to meet a friend there after I visited my grandparents and if I don’t show up he might grab all our other friends and try to storm my grandparents’ castle. This is not hyperbole by the way he has exactly zero chill.”

“Nautingim is out of the way,” Gamora began.

“I’ll pay for your drinks!” Tony added cheerfully.

Peter whipped around, delighted. “Sold!”

“We’re not going to Nautingim,” Gamora said firmly. “First we have to go meet the others, and then we have to deliver you safely home.”

“I’ll buy all of you drinks, new weapons, and pay for your lodgings,” Tony offered. “Please take me to Nautingim first. I’ll even call my dad when we arrive so that he knows I’m safe and won’t try to say you don’t deserve the whole payment because you took too long!”

Gamora wavered. One of her swords _did_ need some serious care after she’d cracked it over an enemy’s skull…

“And!” Tony added. “Peter said you know a magic tree! I wanna meet a magic tree!”

“Enchanted,” Gamora corrected, then sighed, crossing her arms and scowling at Peter. She noticed he very carefully did not make eye contact with her, even as he hailed Rocket and Drax with the controls and told them to head toward Nautingim. “Fine,” she finally said, sighing again. “But I want a room all to myself.” She smirked when Peter finally whipped around to give her wounded eyes.

Tony’s face fell. “Can’t I stay in a room with you? What if my grandparents actually try to kidnap me?”

“Tony,” Peter said, appalled. “You were _actually kidnapped_ already. Just because they had your dad’s permission in the beginning does not mean they didn’t kidnap you. And I know a thing or two about kidnapping.”

Tony frowned, looking down at his hands. “Oh,” he said softly, as if what had happened was finally catching up to him, and he was realizing just how bad it could have been—just how bad it actually _was_.

“Besides, you can stay in my room,” Peter added, smirking at him lecherously. “I’ll protect you, your highness.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “I mean, I guess,” he finally admitted when Gamora didn’t say anything. “But she’s scarier.”

“Wow!” Peter began, then shrugged. “I mean I can’t be mad if it’s true.”

“Alright, but we’re _just_ going to Nautingim,” Gamora said, just to make sure that Tony knew he was pushing it. “And you’ll call your father and then we’ll take you home and get paid.”

“And I get to meet a magical tree!” Tony added, bouncing in his seat.

Gamora began to correct him and say that Groot was an enchanted tree again, then gave up. Tony clearly only heard what he wanted to. “Peter, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but why don’t you turn on some music?” she said instead. “Tony looks like he could use something to listen to.”

“Turn on some AC/DC!” Tony exclaimed, spinning his seat to face Peter. “I have a tab of music if you don’t have it!”

“I only enjoy the ancient classics,” Peter deadpanned, and turned on his own music, which began filtering through the speakers with a voice singing about starry nights and sunny days.

“How dare you say that to me when _Wham Bam Shang-A-Lang_ came out three years after AC/DC was formed,” Tony gasped, offended.

Gamora stared at both of them in distaste. None of what they had just said were words.

.-.-.-.

“Gamora,” Nebula said as Tony was embraced by his friends. “Tony wants me to ask if he’s allowed to have sex.”

“I said he was not considered sexually mature on his father’s planet because his shimmering skin hadn’t shown up yet, not that he wasn’t allowed to have sex,” Gamora answered, and then promptly choked on the next sip of mead she’d been about to have. She turned toward Nebula, who looked incredibly unimpressed. “Why did he ask you to ask me that!?”

Nebula considered her with some distaste. “Because he’s afraid you view him as a child.” She turned and grabbed a napkin to hand it to her. “Anyway, his friends sounded like they were going to take him.”

Gamora abandoned the bar immediately to go collect Tony, because there was no way she was letting Tony’s friends take the reward money for bringing him home.

.-.-.-.

“Tony, oh my God,” Peter choked out, clearly trying to keep from laughing.

Tony frowned, concerned. “What?” He looked down at himself worriedly. “Oh. Am I ugly?”

“No,” Gamora told him immediately. “You look fine.” She gave Peter a glare. “Isn’t that _right_ , Peter.”

“You’ve got a sparkly tramp stamp,” Peter wheezed.

Tony sat up from where he kneeling over Gamora, rushing over to the mirror so he could look over his shoulder to check for himself. His fingers pulled his skin taut as he tried to see what Peter was seeing. “Where? I don’t…”

Gamora sat up and turned the lights brighter. “Let me see.”

Tony scampered over to her and turned. She took a moment to admire the curve of his ass before pulling the lamp so it shined down on him better. “I’ve never seen it in freckles like this,” she admitted. “Usually it’s in patches.”

“Do they always come in like tramp stamps?” Tony asked mournfully.

“Aw, Tony, I was just joking, it’s actually really cute,” Peter hurried to inform him.

Gamora had no idea what a tramp stamp was, and she thought the language was actually quite rude, but she decided not to comment on that. Clearly Tony was making Peter feel bad enough about it. “I’ve just never seen freckles. It’s usually just a patch here or there, in areas where you’re vulnerable—back, stomach, the insides of your legs and arms. The freckles are cute,” she added, agreeing with Peter. “I hope all of your patches come in like this.”

Tony smiled shyly down at his feet, hand drifting back to trace over the freckles.

“Fuck, that’s adorable,” Peter said. “Do we really have to give him back?”

“I want to get paid,” Gamora answered.

“That’s fair,” Tony agreed. “I kind of want to go home and hug my parents anyway.”

Peter made a face but said nothing. That was okay, because Gamora also couldn’t hold back her startled grimace.

“Don’t mention my parents in bed, got it,” Tony said hurriedly. “I realized it was weird as I said it. Sorry.”

Peter frowned. “Tony, you don’t have to be sorry for wanting to hug your parents after being kidnapped and almost forced into marriage. We’ve seen some pretty fucked up stuff, and that’s the top of the list.”

“Well… I always liked to be the best?” Tony offered awkwardly.

“Don’t try to make it more palatable,” Gamora told him firmly. “Be hurt. Get angry. Your grandparents were going to sell you into marriage without your knowledge. You would have been so unhappy in that situation, Tony.”

“My grandparents were so nice to me, made me think they were just trying to help me,” Tony admitted, voice cracking. “I was so stupid.”

“Hey, your dad knew them best and even _he_ was blindsided by this,” Peter pointed out. “Grandparents are _supposed_ to be nice to you. You’re not stupid for trusting them. You’d only be stupid if you trusted them again.”

Tony shook his head violently. “I won’t. I won’t trust them again. They were so willing to hurt me this time. Who knows if they’d even let me get away if they had another chance.”

“If your father is decent in any way, he’ll make sure your grandparents never even have the chance to _see_ you again,” Gamora agreed.

“Okay, but can we stop talking about Tony’s parents and grandparents now? Tony’s dick is out and it’s weird,” Peter added. He motioned between all three of them. “And so is mine. I think no dicks should be out if we’re going to talk about Tony’s family.”

“Oh… I ruined the mood,” Tony said, curling in on himself. “I’m sorry.”

“Maybe the mood was meant to be ruined. You didn’t even know you were being married off to whoever your grandparents deemed worthy six hours ago,” Gamora pointed out.

Peter smirked and elbowed him gently. “And Rocket likes to drive the ship, so we’ll have plenty of time on the trip back to your planet to _not_ talk about your parents.”

“Won’t Mantis be able to sense what’s going on?” Tony asked, concerned. “I don’t want thinks to be weird.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “You have a shimmering tramp stamp on your back, Tony. It’s already pretty weird.”

“You said it was cute!” Tony exclaimed, shoving him.

Gamora rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to the bed. “Well, when you two decide to stop being children, _I_ will be in bed.” She heard a scuffle and then a yelp and rolled her eyes, unable to help a smile as Tony and Peter scurried onto the bed with her as well.


End file.
